I had an iPod for several years and lately I had been coveting the iPhone. I wanted one for many reasons (all legitimate) – 3 devices in one, I would take more pictures/videos of BP, I needed a new phone anyway (my 3 key didn’t work very well, if at all), some apps I wanted to use I couldn’t on my iPod. So we went out and bought me a brandy new iPhone. We brought him home and named him George (actually we named him Nehemiah).
And now I wonder if I made the right decision. Oh, I am very happy with it. Maybe too happy. I set it up so I could see a notification if anything happened on Facebook that I ‘needed’ to know about, new notifications from email, imessage, texts, phone calls, WordPress… You name it – if something happened I was notified. And if nothing happened, I obsessed. I check each and every app anyway. Even though I knew there wasn’t anything going on – I just had to check anyway. It made me feel connected.
The trouble was, I became less connected. I rarely called, wrote, or texted anyone anymore. I just was notified if something happened, but I never connected with those people. So if someone ‘liked’ something I wrote on Facebook or WordPress. yay. But where is the true interaction? Where is the actual connection? There wasn’t any. It just wasn’t happening.
So yesterday I turned off most of my notifications. I refiled my apps into two folders:
Connected: Messages, GV Phone, AIM, Phone, Calendar, Contacts, and Mail
Un-Connected: WordPress, Facebook, Safari, Angry Birds, Temple Run
Connected was relabeled today as: Active
Un-Connected was relabeled today as: Passive
Active means I ‘reach out and touch someone’. JK Active means we communicate with words: it’s a two-way street.
Passive means I ‘reach out’, but not necessarily ‘touch someone’. It’s more of a one-way street.
The objective is for the labels to make me more aware of the need for ME to be active in my relationships. To get involved/be involved in the lives of others. Not to just broadcast and hope that people are ‘connecting’ to me.
So here’s to Un-Connectedness. Hopefully it leads to more active connections, by being un-connected to the passive connections.
